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I always like to get local music when I'm in another country.

I want to make music that somehow connects to the things that I love in America music.

There are a few countries that, for whatever reason, really enjoy listening to my music.

There's been a shift: Country music is popular music now. Every other genre wants to come over to our land.

With streaming services, the walls have come down a bit on genres. So I never really set out to make a country record or a pop record. I just wanted to make it mine.

I've never really been a traditional country kind of guy. I wanted my music to sound more like the end of the '90s and to have the kind of great music, pop or whatever, that radio will embrace.

I want people to focus on listening, not the image. And I want to play to everyone: rednecks, dubstep kids, punk rockers, and people who like as-real-as-it-gets country music.

I really like the old stuff that I cut my musical teeth on, and I loved it when the industry was just like that, without really a genre. Today, country radio's more aimed at a demographic than a genre. It just softens everything.

I love music, that it changes so much, but I also want to keep a bit of the country roots to make it country. I don't want to go too far away from it, or I would do pop music.